A lottery can typically be defined as a game of chance. With an increasing popularity and demand for lottery games, instant lottery games, in particular, are gaining immense recognition and acceptance in the lottery industry. Instant lottery games, also referred to as instant games hereinafter, are such lotteries in which the winning of a player is decided before or at the time of purchase of the lottery ticket and the winning information is instant.
An instant lottery game can be represented as a combination of a lottery object defining the chance of winning the lottery and a player interactivity object to define the level of player interactivity that the lottery demands from a player. Instant lottery games can typically be divided into three types of instant games, wherein the division can be done based on such instant games that have the same common lottery object which decides the chance of winning of a player but have different levels of player interactivity. The first type is a scratch paper lottery. In the scratch paper lottery, a player scratches a paper lottery ticket to determine instantly whether he has a winning ticket or not. Such scratch paper lottery games lack the desired player involvement in terms of playing experience and become monotonous as scratching tickets is primarily a mechanical job from a player's perspective.
The second type is a Personal Computer and/or a Mobile instant lottery. This lottery provides a much improved platform for players to play instant lottery by giving the players a platform to purchase and play instant lottery online. Although this type of lottery increases the level of player interactivity, the main advantage lies in the availability of games anywhere anytime. In such games, a player typically has to generate an event through the PC/Mobile user interface to determine his/her winning. Such events can be through click of a button or a link or any other action that may generate an event which then determines the winning of the player for one or more lottery tickets. However, such games too, lack user interactivity and fail to generate any interest in the player. These games make the process of playing instant lottery games mechanical as all that a player needs to do is to generate an event by means of a click and/or any other event generation mechanism. This is specially the case for players in the age group of 18-35 who live in the age of video games and expect interactivity with the underlying gaming system to generate interest. These games do not demand any skill from the player to play the instant lottery.
The third type relates to an interactive lottery. Multiple interactive lotteries comprising of skill based interactive games have been disclosed in past wherein winning of a player is determined through a display of skill of the player to play the skill based interactive games. US2007202939 discloses such a skill based interactive game, wherein winning of a player, in addition to being dependent on chance, also depends on the skill displayed by the player to play the interactive game. Incorporation of skill as a determining factor in deciding the winning of a player, side-steps from the inherent purpose of playing lotteries, as lotteries should depend only on the chance factor. Further, most of the interactive lotteries, while making the player play interactive, games, fail to disclose the method in which player objects and winning objects of the lotteries are disclosed to the player and then compared with each other to disclose the winning of the player, wherein the winning of the player is decided at the moment the player purchases the ticket.
This background information is provided for the purpose of making known information believed by the applicant to be of possible relevance to the present invention. No admission is necessarily intended, nor should be construed, that any of the preceding information constituted prior art against the present invention.
In view of the foregoing it can be seen that systems and methods are needed for conducting a player interactive lottery, inducing a player to take more active part in the lottery through the use of his/her gaming skills, which would make the lottery more interesting and interactive.